News

Academics cast doubt on shale gas

Academics from Warwick Business School and University College London have published an opinion piece based on research funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC).

They advise policymakers that, for continuing economic, social and environmental reasons, the UK’s gas strategy should be developed on the assumption that there will be no domestically produced shale gas.

They say that recovery of UK shale gas (while still keeping within two degrees of climate change) might only be an option if ten conditions apply.

Summarising, these conditions include:

That there is recoverable shale gas under the UK. (Our difficult geology make make this too difficult or costly.)

That we produce zero electricity using coal after 2025.

That there is widespread cheap technology to capture and store the CO2 that would be produced.

That we are able to measure and manage the methane that is released during shale gas production.

That the fracking industry wins the ‘social licence to operate’ from the people of Britain, because we trust the companies to avoid or control the negative environmental impacts that exist.

Given that Deutsche Bank (and others) is already saying that solar power has won, these conditions seem increasingly unlikely to be met. (In some countries, such as Australia, solar electricity is already less than half the retail price of electricity from the power companies. Within two years it expected to reach ‘grid parity’ in around 80% of countries worldwide.)